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I just finished a few books: The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, is a philosophical treatise on fanaticism, and is a very interesting read. It concentrates on the similarities of religious, political, and other forms of fanaticism, the type of personality that is susceptible to them, and how mass movements of this type start and end. It's a short read, too, but very interesting. Highly recommended. Naked City by Weegee is a book of photographs by the diminutive street photographer. I like his photography, so the stories inbetween were worth reading. He was rather forward-thinking for his time. It's a good historical document of early 20th-century New York City. New Jersey Curiosities by Peter Genovese. Before Weird NJ, Peter Genovese was exploring the oddities of the state and reporting them in the Star-Ledger. He's more interested in kitsch and Americana than ghost stories and urban exploration, but the book has a wealth of state history is great if you've moved here and want to find some quirky places to eat and visit.
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Dec 4, 2006 16:15
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They're making a movie of Devil in the White City. I didn't like it that much. The Olmstead stuff was interesting, the killer seems theorized and unbelievable to me. Interesting read, though. I just finished Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. I loved it. It's a kind of detective novel, from the perspective of s guy who's hired muscle with Tourette's. The TS is handled very well, and the story is good, funny and intriguing, with well-written characters and an excellent sense of setting. Lionel Essrog is a great character and I felt myself wanting more of his story, but Lethem doesn't seem the type to revisit characters. I read his first book many years ago, Gun, With Occasional Music and loved it- a great little dystopian satire. I picked up a few more of his books and have to play catch-up.
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Jan 4, 2007 22:42
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Just finished Lawrence Block's All the Flowers Are Dying, the latest in the Matt Scudder series. It's my favorite of the newer "detective" novels, with an excellent sense of setting and always realistic. No crazy twists, no drawing-room solutions (though Block does that terrifically with his Bernie Rhodenbarr "Burglar" series). This one continues the serial killer story from Everybody Dies with the nameless homicidal genius returning after faking his own death in the house fire- no one was sure he was dead, but they had nothing to follow him with. This book generates a genuine sense of fear with "AB" the killer, because he is smarter than our protagonist and the police, and can blend into many situations like the pure psychopathic predator he is. Old friends return- Mick Ballou the Irish gangster, Danny Boy Bell the information merchant. Block has a real talent for character and drawing you in with intriguing and realistic conversations that drive the story. He deserves his Hugos. I just started the latest in his slightly light-hearted Keller series, Hit Parade. Those are about a hit man, and also enjoyable- light and literary, not heavy action. Block delights in thinking up how to get away with murder, and the Keller books are good reading.
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Jan 12, 2007 17:39
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Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway. I enjoy Hemingway, so even this indulgent and posthumously edited novel was entertaining for me. A thinly veiled autobiographical protagonist is a painter who lives on a small island off Cuba who is visited by his sons by 2 former wives. You got marlin fishing, then you get intrigue as he hunts German u-boats when the war begins. Good action and as always, gripping dialogue. Hemingway is a master at drawing you in by using dialogue between two people who know each other, and therefore leave so much unsaid. This book is no exception, and we learn several big reveals this way. A good read, if not his best work.
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Feb 5, 2007 13:52
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If you want a Christopher Moore that's a little different, try Isle of the Sequined Love Nun. It involves cargo cults and seaplane shenanigans, and was a lot of fun. I like Coyote Blue a lot, I have a signed first from when I met him, but it's the same formula- but one of his best, not as airy as BSF. Is You Suck a sequel? I assumed it was BSF retitled, since BSF is a dumb title.
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Feb 9, 2007 01:32
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Chamberk posted:Finished Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. (I was on a bit of a nonfiction kick for a while.) I got bogged down in the "preparations of the World Fair of 1893" part for MONTHS, but once the fair started I couldn't really put it down, and I finished the book in a night. Fantastic stuff. Certain parts about things that happened during the fair gave me goosebumps. Yeah, despite being a serial killer buff I actually liked the parts about Olmstead and his parks quite a bit. I've been to several parks he designed- Central Park of course, and Brookdale, Branch Brook, and Eagle Rock reservation in NJ. I just finished The Watchman by Robert Crais, one of his Elvis Cole detective novels. This one is more of an actioner, and features sidekick Joe Pike in the lead role, much like his excellent prior novel, L.A. Requiem. Crais writes similar to Kent Anderson of Night Dogs and Sympathy for the Devil fame, and manages to merge the poetry of Chandler with the laconic, staccato brevity of Hammett. He definitely stands on their foundation and writes a great thriller. Prior to that I slogged through Glen Cook's The Tyranny of the Night, the first in his new series. This one is set in an alternate history, I'm guessing around the 1300's. The names are all changed. Rome is Brothe, and I found that to be a confusing and distracting conceit. I loved The Black Company, and I'm enjoying the story of Else Tage, but not being a history buff is leaving me at a disadvantage. The meddling of the Norse pantheon is great fun, but I don't think this is his best work. It's a bit indulgent, and I wish he'd just used the historical names, like Janissaries and Florence and so on. It makes keeping track of who's who a real burden, which weighs down an otherwise gripping tale.
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May 2, 2007 13:05
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Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. It's popular to hate this and Hannibal, but I think this is better than his last effort. While it's unwise to delve into the backstory of a bugaboo like Lecter, this does a decent job. It was entertaining reading, but wasn't as good as Red Dragon. I enjoyed the setting on the Eastern front, and post-war Paris. I felt Lady Murasaki to be a bit contrived, but for airplane reading it's quite good. It doesn't quite give the finger to readers like Hannibal did, where he tries to outdo the horror with Mason and the infamous ending, which I think the movie handled better. Hopefully Harris will move on, and his publisher will allow him to.
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May 6, 2007 16:50
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AlexHat posted:It didn't give us the finger?! It basically destroyed the best character ever created! I'm going to pretend it never happened. Well, I'm not really a Lecter fanboy. I see where you're coming from, though. Lecter was best when he was left to wander the world, like the boogeyman he is. If you enjoy Lecter and want to read about a psychopath who may not eat people but is just as terrifying, I suggest the latest two Matthew Scudder novels by Lawrence Block: Hope to Die and All the Flowers Are Dying. The unnamed killer is like Lecter, a psychopathic genius, and he has a ripping good time in those two books, setting people up, murdering for joy or profit. The Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith might interest you as well. Pontius Pilate posted:Just finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by whatever that guy's name is. I enjoyed it much more than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and it seemed as if I was the only that didn't hate the ending. Hemmingway said it was cheating as does everybody I know but I guess I could look past it. Or something. I liked the ending, and thought it was one of the more poignant parts. I wrote a paper on it ages ago. Tom's little game is a poke at abolitionists, he wants to free Jim but only if he can feel ennobled by it. And it lets Huck see how even his good friend Tom thinks little of poor Huck and his slave friend Jim.
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May 7, 2007 19:03
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Shōgun by James Clavell. This epic is terrific and gripping. It has a pedestrian feel at times, because it doesn't assume any knowledge of Japanese history or culture, but once you get past that it rewards you with some very rich characters. At 1152 pages, it is daunting but by the end you'll be wishing it was the first in a trilogy. Mariko, Blackthorne, Rodrigues, Father Alvito, Yabu, Omi, Gyoko and especially Toranaga are delightfully rich characters. The history involved is fascinating- if you didn't know about the Jesuit influence on trade, or the details of sailing a ship without knowing longitude, or samurai etiquette, you'll get an earful and it's written in a very enjoyable fashion. I'm looking forward to reading more of Clavell's books, and I regret not picking up some of them when I was younger, since every man had a copy of Shōgun in the 70's.
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Jun 8, 2007 14:25
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I just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy and loved it. It ended right where it needed to, and I was very impressed with how he handled a post-apocalyptic world with such poetic prose. Everything (well, enough things) is explained through light flashbacks and how they survive. It's probably the most realistic book in the genre I've read, though I also love This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow. It's a soul-crushing read, but I never liked upbeat post-apocalyptic lit, such as Wolf and Iron by Gordon R. Dickson, which is essentially porn for primitivists.
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Jun 14, 2007 13:26
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The Sun Also Rises is one of my favorites. I was just recalling the awe they had when they met the fellow who had battle scars from a "real war." And don't forget that the story could also be titled A farewell to my balls  I just finished Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits, a collection of articles and a story, regarding food tourism, Ferran Adria, and other restaurant and cooking related topics. Bourdain writes well and gives a punk edge to it, so it was interesting. I picked up P.G. Wodehouse's The Mating Season for a light read while up at Lake George. How I have missed his delightful prose.
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Jun 30, 2007 12:59
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The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse. How I love Wodehouse. I haven't read a Jeeves & Wooster book in years, and I regretted it. This one involves romantic entanglements and is chock-full of his famous prose, which had me stopping to chuckle every few pages. I'm glad I have so many books ahead for me to read, I'll be terribly sad when I'm done with them all.
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Jul 14, 2007 02:01
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Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. I actually enjoyed the movie better; the parts with Alex and his creative use of English are the best, and some of the shtetl stories are quite good. Other attempts at magic realism fell flat for me, and I'm glad they left them out of the movie. The book is still quite enjoyable, but drags quite a bit during the parts that are supposed to be Jonathan's novel. It's well constructed and a quick read otherwise, with a few delightful characters who are worth your while. Next? Speaking with the Angel, a story collection edited by Nick Hornby.
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Jul 21, 2007 02:01
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Speaking with the Angel, a collection of stories edited by Nick Hornby. His son has severe autism, and the book raises money for schools for such children. The stories are uniformly good with much humor, even the horrifying ones. Irvine Welsh, Roddy Doyle, Colin Firth(!), Helen Fielding... it's a well rounded collection and was thoroughly amusing. Plus it's a good cause. Truly delightful, go get it. Now I'm reading The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy, based on his teaching the children of Yamarack island, the "Gullah" community. It's as gripping as his other works, I'm enjoying it quite a lot. I'm in Atlanta for work, typing this from a sushi bar (MF Sushi) because I am alone and work called me to fix some poo poo.  Got Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, and threesome of Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood, A Good Man is Hard to Find, and another, to hold me over.
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Jul 24, 2007 02:12
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Well, I finished The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy. It was enjoyable throughout. He has a great sense of humor and the sad tale of the black kids isolated on the island, their school neglected by the board of education, is an important one. We see small victories as he fights against the tide of bureaucracy, racism, and the Yamacraw folks' own traditions. It's a good story, and he does make a difference in the end. It was made into a popular 70's movie called Conrack with John Voight, which is sadly not on DVD. I started It Can't Happen Here, and I'm surprised at how funny it is already.
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Jul 27, 2007 16:10
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bobservo posted:The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins) You are a brave, brave man. Rather like Twain's famous skewering review of Fenimore Cooper, many authors have written of the pain and tedium of reading Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone in particular. You should look them up, they may help you recover  As for Camus, I loved The Stranger and The Plague. His essays are a bit harder to get through, but The Myth of Sisyphus is a good start.
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Aug 4, 2007 13:59
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I read a few books on my trip to Ireland. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis is a terrific what-if about fascism coming to America in the 30's, in the guise of a folksy "common sense" politician. I was lead to believe it was a theocracy, and it's nothing of the sort. He uses religion has a weapon, just like other fascists did. Anyway, it was a delightful read- surprisingly funny in places, and unflinching in portraying the brutality. It cracks me up when people say "we didn't know what was going on" in Germany and Italy when this book speculated so well in '35. It's an excellent read, and doesn't cop out- the resolution is utterly believable. I'm going to read The Plot Against America soon, and I know it's supposed to be inferior. The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle is also excellent. It's a short, quick character study, but he manages to make it very gripping. It's Joycean in some ways, recursive and almost entirely an internal monologue, creating a heroine out of an unfortunately everyday character. It's gut-wrenching in places, and brings a deep sympathy to its protagonist. I was a bit worried when J.K. Rowling had the big blurb on it, but don't let that scare you away. While it's obvious with a little thought regarding the title, it's about an abused wife who stays with her husband for many years, and why. Brendan Behan's Island: An Irish Sketchbook by Brendan Behan, with illustrations by Paul Hogarth is a fascinating little picture of the country circa 1960 by one of its more famous writer-poets, with lively sketches. Behan repeats some stories from elsewhere, and it's toned down from his ribald work in Borstal Boy and Confessions of an Irish Rebel. It's a nice read for a tourist, and I'm glad I found an old copy. He meanders around the four corners of the country describing the soul of the locals. I'm reading Confessions of an Irish Rebel now. I wanted to bring Finnegan's Wake and Campbell's annotations, but I couldn't read that on a plane.
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Sep 4, 2007 22:30
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perceptual_set posted:An awesome book, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I would like to warn you away from Plot Against America though. I thought it was a heaping mass of dog poo poo and continually stole from Lewis. I think I ranted about it in this thread. Well, I had the Roth book and took the Lewis out of the library first after reading the review. I think Roth is concentrating more on the fallen hero Lindbergh. I don't know if they do it in the book, but if the baby's kidnapping was pinned on a Jew instead of a German (many people believe Hauptmann was a patsy, or just someone holding the money) I could imagine it leading to something like the book describes. I'll shut up and discuss it when I'm done reading it, though. 
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Sep 6, 2007 22:09
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Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Brendan Behan. This one is more disjointed and repetitive than Borstal Boy, but is still quite entertaining. It has the feel that it was dictated, and it probably was. The foreword by his editor makes it seem so. Colorful language and a terrific way of capturing moments of his past make this a great read for anyone interested in Ireland, specifically during and after WW2. The author is hardly perfect but he had a gift with language, and a refreshing viewpoint at the time. Now, his memoirs are an interesting relic and his poetry and plays are his lasting gift.
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Sep 10, 2007 13:01
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The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. I wasn't thrilled by this, especially after reading Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, but I don't understand the hate for it. It's more of a memoir of something that didn't happen than an alternative history. It lingers on Roth's childhood in 30's/40's Newark, and that interested me more than the cockamamie plot. I enjoyed the characters and his childhood adventures, but found the closing of the story and its explanation unsatisfying. It leaves us hanging, unlike Lewis's novel which doesn't give us a happy ending but gives us hope and a hint of the struggle to return to democracy. The first few chapters were quite engrossing, despite a few characters who seem important and go nowhere. Lewis's book is much better, but this one is still interesting.
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Sep 25, 2007 15:43
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Find some used local bookstores, older editions are usually a few bucks and sometimes much nicer.
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Sep 27, 2007 14:32
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bobservo posted:Pop. 1280 (1964) Like I said before, I'm adding Jim Thompson to the list of authors I need to read more of. Agreed, this is one of the best books I've ever read. I'm told The Killer Inside Me and After Dark My Sweet are also top notch. No Country for Old Men by Cormac MacCarthy. Terrific tale set in the Texas borderlands with an old sheriff, a terrifying killer, and a hunter who comes across that killer's satchel of loot. The author's voice is even more enthralling here than in The Road, and his subtle excoriations of modern society and how it sacrifices its young men are just one gripping facet of this story. No one has said so much with so few words since Hemingway, but MacCarthy's poetic use of it keeps from ever being compared with Papa. The ending is the only thing that can happen; it is disappointing, but getting there is very rewarding. I can't wait to see the movie, but I'm wondering how they'll tell it. I recommend this book very highly. I put down The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism by Robert Kee because it is too wordy and dry; can someone recommend a good history of Ireland, not just The Troubles, but including it? I'm in the middle of Les Miserables and I'm loving it; I paused to read MacCarthy so I could read it before seeing the movie. Les Miserables is very wordy as well, but Hugo has a way with words, so the incessant tangents and asides are usually very interesting.
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Nov 10, 2007 23:52
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I finally finished the unabridged edition of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Wow, that feels like an episode of my life, I was slogging through it for so long. Not to say it's not a great novel. It is rather amazing in its scope, from its retelling of the events of Waterloo to riots long after, and the trials and tribulations of Jean Valjean, Fantine, and Cosette. I enjoyed Jean's tale the most, and that of young Marius the least. Gavroche the gamin was somewhat interesting, and there are long asides on the nature of religious orders and that of argot. I took the book to Paris with me and managed to crack the first 350 pages on flights, but the remaining 1100 pages were a long slog. Hugo writes like you are sitting across from him at a cafe, and he is mostly an easy read. His characters are often in broad strokes but they are very much alive. This is a classic worth reading, and Valjean is a character I will not soon forget. His redemption is one of the great stories of literature, and if you're a faster reader than me (I began this in October!) you might not consider it the leviathan I did. I don't normally read so slowly, but I've been watching a lot of movies and mostly read this on trains. And I don't take trains as often since my girlfriend moved uptown.
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Jan 24, 2008 19:58
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The French Quarter by Herbert Asbury. It's a lurid history of the New Orleans underworld from the days from before it was officially a city until the turn of the 20th century. I enjoyed it a lot, the author also did the seminal Gangs of New York. He's a journalist and likes to hype things up, and unfortunately used old newspaper archives for a lot of his sources, so stuff like the lynching of the Italians in the 1890's is not judged, because his sources assume they were guilty. It's a fine history of bizarre underworld characters like Bridget Fury and runaway slaves who became boogeymen, and discusses Jean Lafitte in great detail, the pirate of the Delta. He was more of a slave smuggler like Jim Bowie, though. I wrote a long review on my blog but I won't repost it here. If you like sleazy American history it's a must-read, just take it with a grain of salt. It was written in the 30's when crime was a favorite topic as long as you wagged your finger at the criminals after glorifying them.
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Feb 12, 2008 16:06
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The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy. I enjoyed this a lot, but can't worship it. Sebastian Dangerfield is a compelling character, an American bumming in Ireland on the G.I. Bill after WW2. He rakishly battles the forces of sobriety and monogamy. He's a classic character and probably one of the best portrayals of a cad put to paper. Donleavy's language is sparse and poetic, reminiscent of a conversation in a pub or internal monologue. I'll definitely be reading more by him. I was supposed to be done with this by St. Patrick's Day, it took me a month to read because I've been immersed in movies lately. I found it a little difficult to empathize with him, but he's an anti-hero so that makes quite a bit of sense.
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Apr 7, 2008 13:15
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I read two similar novels, Darkly Dreaming Dexter from which the TV series is based on, and The Wolf Man by Nicholas Pekearo. They're both about "dark avengers," unlikely heroes who hunt the predators who hunt us. The Dexter book was alright, but I enjoy the show more. The story arc ends too short and seems like a gimmick, while the series grew it out well. The book has a weak ending, but once again Dexter is a fine and interesting character to read. The Wolfman is quite good- unpolished, as it was a manuscript given to a publisher right before Pekearo, an NYPD Auxiliary, was shot by a crazed gunman. The novel is- you guessed it- about a werewolf who hunts bad guys. Sure you can sort of figure out the mystery yourself, but it's more fun listening to Marlowe Higgins, the Vietnam Vet hard rocker slob who howls at the moon once a month, bitch about life and people and things. It's pure pulp and enjoyable as such. Oh, I also read Tana French's excellent thriller In the Woods, set outside Dublin. A police procedural about a man kidnapped as a child, whose friends disappeared, who gets caught in an investigation of a murder in those same woods he was lost in. It plays a lot of tricks on you but the writing is solid and enjoyable, gripping throughout, with very endearing characters who she isn't afraid to make flawed and human. A great read.
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Aug 6, 2008 03:34
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:44 |
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Read A Soldier of the Great War next  I love Helprin's novels.Hit and Run by Lawrence Block. The latest of his Keller novels- a nondescript hit man that we follow on his jobs. The last 2 novels have been different, and this one of course sets Keller up- this time as a fall guy. Seeing how he manages to escape a country-wide manhunt is quite interesting, and Block manages to bring such fantasies down to Earth, and make them believable and realistic. Keller is a great character- the likeable, stamp-collecting hit man with his acerbic fixer Dot sending him out on jobs. I highly recommend the series, even though this may be the last. Though I doubt it. Oh, I also read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. A rightful classic. I didn't feel like slogging through the Archipelago books so I got one day of life in the gulag distilled into a fine novel. It's a short read and worth reading. Mack the Knife fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Sep 10, 2008 |
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Sep 10, 2008 18:11
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